MALTA HOSPITALS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 27 April 1942, Page 4

MALTA HOSPITALS

BOMBED DELIBERATELY BY NAZIS RED CROSS TAKEN AS TARGET. GERMAN OFFICER EXPRESSES HORROR. (British Official Wireless.) (Received This Day, 12.55 p.m.) RUGBY, April 26. A Middle East communique states: “Hospitals in Malta yesterday were subjected to three deliberate daylight heavy bombing attacks by German aircraft. In the first raid two wards of the general hospital were demolished, the Red Cross on the roof was destroyed and the dining hall was hit. The casualties were six killed and tw« wounded. A German officer prisoner in the hospital expressed his horror and amazement at his comrades, as he knew the Red Cross was. visible. He warned a nurse to take shelter during the next alert as: ‘Now they have started they will not leave any building standing.’ A Red Cross was 'improvised from sheets which the German prisoner said were large enough.

“In the second raid the same hospital was hit again. Three more wards were demolished and the improvised Red Cross was hit. Four persons were killed, including a child. At another hospital damage was done by a bomb and an unexploded bomb hit the Red Cross on the roof.

“The prisoner of war camp, which had been put in the hospital area for safety was also hit and one Italian prisoner was killed and another injured. “There was a further raid when the cookhouse of the first hospital to be attacked was hit and other bombs fell in this area. Details of the damage done are not yet available.”